According to a new study, pregnant women with depression tend to receive “inconsistent” treatment which results in them spending more time in the hospital before their babies are born.

In order to come to their conclusions, researchers followed 20 separate health care providers in six different Michigan clinics around, and observed what happened. The one thing they found in common among all participants was a lack of uniformity when it came to treating depressed pregnant women.

"There was no system-level support for providers. They felt as if they were making decisions out on an island," principal investigator Dr. Christie Palladino, an obstetrician/gynecologist at Georgia Health Sciences University, said in a university news release.

Further, many of the providers involved were found to be very uncommitted and reluctant to talk about depression with both patients and mental health providers, the U.S. World and News Report noted in their article on the matter.

"That's a long time for an otherwise healthy woman to be in the hospital before going into labor," Palladino said. "It has serious consequences for the mother, for the family and for the hospital system in terms of time and cost."

The study pertaining to these findings appeared in the journal General Hospital Psychiatry.

Source: http://www.brainphysics.com/news/depression/hospitals-are-ignoring-depressed-pregnant-women